t on
end in the shadow of the depot. There was an auger hole on a level with
Seth's eye, through which he could glower out for his last look on
Ascalon, and the people who gathered around to deride him and triumph in
his overthrow.

Through this small opening Seth cursed them, checking such of them off
by name as he recognized, setting them down in his memory for the
vengeance he declared he would return speedily and exact. There he
stood, like Don Quixote in his cage, his red eye to the hole, swearing
as terribly as any man that marched in that hard-boiled army in Flanders
long ago.

Those who had been awed by his grim silence in the days when he ruled
above all law in Ascalon, were surprised now by his volubility. Under
provocation Craddock could say as much as the next man, it appeared.
Unquestionably, he could express his limited thoughts in words luridly
strange. He wearied of this arraignment at last, and subsided. Long
before the train came he lapsed into his natural blue sulkiness,
remaining as quiet behind his auger hole as one ready for the grave.

They loaded Craddock on a truck when the train from the west whistled,
trundled him down the platform and posted him ready to load in the
baggage-car, attended by a large, jubilant crowd. There was so much
hilarity in this gathering for a funeral, indeed, and so much profanity,
denunciation, and threat issuing out of the coffin box--for Seth broke
out again the minute they moved him--that the baggage-man aboard the
train demurred on receiving the shipment. He closed the door against the
eager citizens who mounted the truck to shove the box aboard, leaving
only opening enough for him to stand flatwise in and shout up the
platform to the conductor.

This conductor was a notable man in his day on that pioneer railroad. He
was a bony, irascible man, fiery of face, with a high hook nose that had
been smashed to one side in some battle when he was construction foreman
in his days of lowly beginning. He wore a pistol strapped around his
long coat, which garment was braided and buttoned like an ambassador's,
and he was notable throughout the land of cattle and cards as a man who
could reach far and hit hard. If Seth Craddock had applied to him for
instruction in invective and profanity, veteran that he was he would
have been put at the very foot of the primer class.

Now this mighty man came striding down the platform, thrusting his way
through the crowd with no gentl